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Lycanestra was completed in 1998. The medium is extreme paper mache, a term I coined to define a process of paper mache using brown paper bags soaked in a proprietary glue mixture and applied over a steel armature. The work is 5 x 4 feet.

Designing Lycanestra brought up an interesting question. How does one describe the goddess? Throughout history the goddess has been portrayed as a female human figure, many of these figures are rotund to symbolize fecundity and plenty. But I decided that this did not fully describe her vastness and power. Instead I incorporated the element of negative space. First, I sculpted a woman’s body in bas relief. Next, I flipped the form over and pulled out the interior stuffing used to support the woman shape. What remained was the inside of the bas relief – an empty space. In this sculpture her empty form is all women. She is every woman’s face and she is faceless. Her outline is tangible because we both feel and know the effects of her power. But her center is both nothingness and all things. She is the vast empty space of creation among the stars and in our DNA.

In this avatar of the goddess, her entourage is a pack of wild wolves following her in the moonlight. The wolves symbolize both family and ferocity. Wolves are known for the complex relationship of members within the wolf pack and the need to savagely bring down prey in order to survive.

She dances with one foot striding forward into the freedom of the next moment, and one foot standing within the crucible of unending rebirth from stardust to the molecules of life. And we, reflected in her nakedness, dance with her under the unfolding embrace of her wings.